Writer James Frey may have taken a beating in the literary world for his partly fictionalized memoir A Million Little Pieces— for which Oprah Winfrey famously took him to task—but he’s a growing force on the art scene. Pal Richard Prince designed the cover for Frey’s recent novel, Bright Shiny Morning, and the author has boldly commemorated his Oprah humiliation by commissioning a painting, Public Stoning, above, from Ed Ruscha. What did Ruscha make of the request? “He laughed and then said ‘absolutely,’ ” says Frey. The painting is on view this month in New York—not at the Half Gallery, which Frey owns with designer Andy Spade and former Black Book magazine editor Bill Powers, but at the Flag Art Foundation, in the show “Wall Rockets”, for which Frey has written a catalogue essay. And that’s the truth.

"A Novel Approach" originally appeared in the October 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's October 2008 Table of Contents.